Without the physical advantages of Antwerp, and without the
turbulence of Ghent, Lierre has escaped their strange vicissitudes,
and for hundreds of years has enjoyed the prosperity of a quiet and
industrious town. Its church of St. Gommarius is renowned for its
magnificent proportions, its superb window tracery, and its wonderful
rood-loft--features in which it has eclipsed in glory even the great
cathedrals of Belgium, and which place it alone as a unique
achievement of the art of the fifteenth century. It is in no sense a
military town, and has no defences, though there is a fort of the same
name at no great distance from it.

Into this town, without warning of any kind, the Germans one morning
dropped two of their largest shells. One fell near the church, but
fortunately did no harm. One fell in the Hospital of St. Elizabeth. We
heard in Antwerp that several people had been wounded, and in the
afternoon two of us went out in one of our cars to see if we could be
of any service. We found the town in the greatest excitement, and the
streets crowded with families preparing to leave, for they rightly
regarded these shells as the prelude of others. In the square was
drawn up a large body of recruits just called up--rather late in the
day, it seemed to us. We slowly made our way through the crowds,
and, turning to the right along the Malines road, we drew up in front of
the hospital on our right-hand side. The shell had fallen almost
vertically on to a large wing, and as we walked across the garden we
could see that all the windows had been broken, and that most of the
roof had been blown off. The nuns met us, and took us down into the
cellars to see the patients. It was an infirmary, and crowded together
in those cellars lay a strange medley of people. There were bedridden
old women huddled up on mattresses, almost dead with terror.
Wounded soldiers lay propped up against the walls; and women and